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Definition of a Panic Attack

Panic Attack: A discrete period of intense fear or discomfort, in which four or more of the following symptoms developed abruptly and reached a peak within 10 minutes:

1) palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate

2) sweating

3) trembling or shaking

4) sensations of shortness of breath or smothering

5) feeling of choking

6) chest pain or discomfort

7) nausea or abdominal distress

8) feeling dizzy, unsteady, lightheaded, or faint

9) derealisation (feelings of unreality) or depersonalisation (being detached from oneself)

10) fear of losing control or going crazy

11) fear of dying

12) paraesthesias (numbness or tingling sensations)

13) chills or hot flushes

from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, American Psychiatric Press Inc.; 4th ed text revision edition (31 July 2000)

Everything is flat and white and bright. There is no depth or perspective. Every sound scratches behind my eyeballs. Every smell is a cold pressure at the base of my neck. Thoughts run rings around my skull, skidding over my forehead, cringing under my ears, pulling tightly into the ridge at the top of my spine.

In the Hospital after the crash it was so bright I couldn’t see. Only in the turning of the light down, like a migraine on a dial, would the bleach let up so I could make out the shapes in the whiteness. The nurses crowded round like muted cine-film slipping in silent twitches. They gathered gossiping over me in a vacuum. Soundless implosions, poking and prodding.

Now I’m living in sections. One frame after another, falling away before I can grasp it, knowing it only after it’s gone. But maybe, if I try hard enough, if I keep practising, eventually the sounds and smells and images, each sensation, each thought, might grow together and begin to run seamlessly. Eventually the moments might scar into each other like healed wounds. I might, maybe, learn how to fill these gasping spaces.

***

“Please come, I want to see you.”

One year, two months and three days ago. Early in the morning, there she was at the end of the phone. I heard her swap ears and drop the receiver against her clothes then pick it up again.

“I got my first big contract. It’s like unbelievable, unreal money. You can help me celebrate. Come on, Marian? I want to share this with you...”

I hadn’t seen her for six months and I’d started to tell myself that this is what happens when you grow up: friends leave, they lead different lives. Most of us had got jobs or gone to university but Liza was on the way somewhere. She had opportunities. She’d left for California and here I was in London trying to get a degree; stopped still, steadily diminishing into someone from her past. Until this phone call.

She never used to cry much, but from the other side of the Atlantic I could hear tears begin to form and her fingers brushing them away. Her small, stifled, thickening breaths. I knew what she was like when she couldn’t cope. She’d close herself up, stay sweet so no one would know there was a problem.

“Liza? Has something happened?”

“No, no, everyone’s really nice. Everyone’s just lovely to me. But they’re all so new and I’m just, I just feel... Most of the time it’s fine, it’s great. I just... I just feel a little lonely and strange and like it’s all out of my control. I just need my friend. Will you come?”

***

My eyes are still closed. The day sits fidgeting beside me. I ignore him and pretend I’m still dreaming. He starts with the kisses. His kisses always exhaust me and I screw my eyes tighter shut. He’s pretending not to get frustrated and I don’t really care. He gets off the bed and starts tidying up. It must be Sunday because when I unscrew my eyes the clock is looming blinking 3pm and he hasn’t gone to uni. It’s already getting dark again. I can hear him flapping the clothes around.

He wears tweed sometimes. It’s shameful. He’s got a cap like my granddad used to wear. He thinks it’s fashionable but it’s hideous. It’s shoddy. Drab and shoddy. His body hangs, resigned, off his shoulders, folds a few times on its way down. He’s looking over to see if I’m still asleep. He’s got wet eyes that merge into his iris.

He turns on the TV and brings me a cup of tea and we sit up against the pillows and make surprising laughs at the Ministry of Silly Walks. A group of children pass under the bedroom window and echo up stifled hilarity, soft and foreign.

Beautiful yellow falling leaves. How do I stop feeling tired? Bells are ringing across the city. On the screen the Monty Python policeman vomits into his hat then tips it over his head so it runs down his face.

Tweed was one of the first things I noticed about Cliff on our first day of lectures. I knew it wasn’t very attractive but I thought it might be intelligent and interesting and wholesome. And it was interesting... until it wasn’t anymore. And since last year, when it all happened, and I came back changed, all I’ve been able to think about is Alex, the man I met on the night of the crash.

Cliff is very tolerant. He has a reassuring, steady way of interpreting things. I’m trying to use his perspective while I gather enough strength to establish my own. He’s saying:

“Maybe you should come to the lecture tomorrow, or something. Or go for a walk. Get out and see a few things. You’ve missed so much and they’re asking about you.”

Resisting the urge to break myself open and search through the flesh and organs for that force in there that’s keeping things moving. I don’t want to go to lectures, I don’t think like that anymore.

“I know it’s hard, I know.” Cliff’s still talking. “But you really have to try to move on.” He puts his arm around me and I shrink backwards. He can feel me flinching but he stays there. “Get back into it and you’ll get satisfaction from studying again, you’ll start feeling like your old self. And if you see people, it might remind you that you’re not alone, you know?”

Liza will be 21 this month, like me. Or she would be. Does she still have birthdays? I wonder if Alex would have the same attitude as Cliff; he must be cleverer than Cliff, I wonder if he would give me the same advice.

“There are some things that are just too big for us to understand.” Cliff’s still talking. “But we have to learn to live with them. You have to take it step by step, Marian. Give yourself achievable goals, manageable chunks.”

He’s patronising me now, turning the sound up on the TV. I’ve started rolling a spliff. There are some little pieces of grief down the side of the mattress and I’m rolling them off my finger into the tobacco. Everything’s the same texture. Nothing really tastes of much.

“No, no he’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, isn’t it? Beautiful plumage!” bellows Michael Palin from the corner of the bedroom.

Oh. That’s funny.

Marooned inside my skull like floating porridge, all potted in flesh.

Before I left the hospital in LA they prescribed little blue, oval 150mg tablets for the post-traumatic stress, for the major depressive episodes, for the panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, for the social anxiety disorder and the generalised anxiety disorder. The looping swings between psychic and psychotic.

“Well, well, well,” Darian had padded in circles around the room, after the nurses left and he’d showed me the contract with Eliza’s name clearly signed at the bottom, “it’s what she wanted. It’s what everyone wants.” And then he gave me a cheque for $80,000. “A small gesture, to help you get back on track. We’re all surprised at how you pulled through and trust the damage will be manageable. Our medical expertise is available at any time you need it and we will ensure you have the best possible journey back to London.”

And here I am six months later, faltering around in the corner of the pillows, squeezing my head down, hoping to burrow back into sleep or to crawl myself inside out so that maybe I’ll emerge new and unready, like a raw pupa with nothing to remember.

Cliff hovers over me. His wrists are limp and his fingers wiggle. “Do you want another cup of tea and your pills?” I can smell old tobacco and yellowness behind the pillows. I wish there was a Wonderland or a Narnia down here. I could just fall headfirst and maybe break my neck in the fag-ash snow and leaves and sucked-up filters, and just lie down and let the gap grow between my head and my body. That would be nice.

“Yes, yes. Tea and pills.” That melodramatic, far away voice is mine and I’m dragging myself up and punching the pins and needles out of my leg as Cliff exasperates into the kitchen.

***

I’m really stoned now, watching TV with the street lamps coming in the window and Cliff’s asleep because he has to go to uni in the morning. There’s a mountain of fridges in Manchester; there’s a war; hundreds more dead. Chef on a clip-show, cooing and gurning. Flick it to the one with the mashed up squares.

I turn on the computer and search for her name again. The usual fan-sites. And the first of the news sites is always

Beauty Suspended after Horrific Accident

and I’m reading it again:

Beauty Suspended After Horrific Accident

August 1st 2000

Eliza Celeste, the fashion world’s most recently revered icon, died last night in a terrifying car crash. The acclaimed beauty was being chauffeured home after a private party in the desert when her car hit a freak oil patch and skidded off the road. She was taken immediately to LA’s most well-equipped and state-of-the-art medical institution where specialists were unable to revive her.

Following Eliza’s own wishes, her fiancé, businessman and art collector Darian Pelmont, arranged for her body to undergo the cryonic preservation process favoured by a growing number of Hollywood’s success stories.

The process, now a familiar procedure to those in touch with contemporary medical advances, puts the deceased body into a state of suspension, carefully preserving every cell, confident that a method will soon be devised to reanimate the body – and bring the person back to life. Mr Pelmont made a statement yesterday:

“Eliza had made it clear she wished to opt for the cryonics method. We both believe we will be reunited in the future. Her beauty will be preserved forever. I cannot mourn her loss because she is really still here with all of us. I can only celebrate the genius of scientific endeavour.”

I’m holding my breath, my eyes are stinging. Biting my lips together, rubbing the back of my hand vigorously over them. They start to grow and that’s when I know to stop. They tingle ouch and some tiny piece of pleasure breaks through a crack. I’m relishing it, examining my knee bones and how they’re connected to my thigh bones and singing the song to myself.

In the first report I’ve been written out of existence. In the next one there’s a glimpse of me. It’s from a British tabloid. The only coverage of the story from this country.

“My Eliza Will Be Back” Claims Beauty’s Beau

Eliza Celeste, the British babe who made it big in America, has been frozen in time by scientists. Eliza was in a terrifying car crash with friends last week, on the way back from a wild desert party. She was killed outright when her chauffeur-driven car skidded off the road after hitting an oil patch. Her fiancé, businessman and art-world boff, Darian Pelmont, rushed her immediately to a plush Hollywood hospital where doctors worked through the night to put her on ice.

“All the stars are signing up for the cryonics method,” said Darian. “My Eliza will awake again, as beautiful as ever.”

Let’s hope so or we’ll all miss the Glistenstar Girl!

She’s not the Glistenstar Girl. And, fuck you Darian. She’s not your Eliza. She wasn’t herself, she wasn’t happy. You never really knew her.

I leave the site and begin the usual punching through to check my email. And tonight something different, a new message... something from IIP:

Dear Esteemed Client,

You are cordially invited to attend the private view of our upcoming, ground-breaking new collection.

The Angels

The Institute of Immortal Pursuits will be opening its Gallery to a select audience for a week’s preview of our permanent exhibition which is set to open in the first week of November. The Angels will show the suspended bodies of some of the most stunning icons of our time. Tragically taken from us but carefully held by the Institute until the technique to resurrect them is perfected, Eliza Celeste, Suki Jones and Mina Lymme are just three of the beauties that will be on display. Please RSVP for your private pass. The Gallery will be open to invited guests between 10am and 5pm next week from Tuesday until Saturday.

At the bottom of the email, in a different font, it says:

“Reply using a pseudonym. List your interest as potential client.”

I’m shaking under the duvet, trying to crawl into Cliff’s snores. Who is it from? It wouldn’t be Darian, he sent me away, and none of the others would invite me, knowing he didn’t want me there. The only person I can think of is Alex, perhaps he wants to see me again, perhaps he thinks of me as much as I think of him, perhaps he’s tracked me down and sent me the invite as an excuse for us to meet. He said he was studying at the Institute. It must be him, he must remember me, he must be wondering where I am, perhaps.

On the edge of sleep, food and air and fear rally about my belly, passing like speeding ghost cars.

***

I am standing on a motorway, facing the traffic, and car after car after car drives through me. Headlamps rush forwards in the darkness. At each hit I travel through the engine, the fibres in the seats. I pull on the seatbelts, suck through the life of the passengers. Every life is flashing. Every moment dashed by the next. Each blink a tiny switch, a rapid strobe of hitting and forgetting. The cars are roaring through me. The terror of the smell of petrol. The build up of air and the sucking churn. A sharp black rainbow. A greedy silence.

“Stay with me, stay with me.”

***

Struck awake by the sound of the phone. It is electric shocks in my ears. Creaking over the bed. I’m tensing with each ring. I know it’s Cliff calling from work. I know he’s worried. I’m so sick of him worrying. Being so sick of him is enough to tip me off the bed onto my knees. On the floor, by the phone, is Liza’s face in a magazine, in an advert for makeup. There she is again, trying to tell me something. I’m trying to listen to make the words out but all it says is

“Buy me, buy me.

Buy me, buy me.”

The phone stops ringing.

I’ve made my decision. My first manageable chunk is probably not what he hoped for, so I won’t tell Cliff. He will, of course, understand. Put on the suit. Cash card. Passport.

Manageable Chunk 1.

Clinging to the escalator all the way down. Faltering onto the tube, squashing amongst shoulders, all of us vacuum-packed. The train lurches, the woman’s hand beside mine on the rail has long, pink, curling fingernails. Determined silence. Who can contain themselves most thoroughly? We’re propelled forwards and a quiet cacophony collects. The thunder of a scuffing foot, wheeze of a lung, a pitched sneeze, rapid steel on steel. A metal rat careers through mucus-lined pipes. I want to put my finger inside my eye socket, to scoop out the prickling. Opposite me someone is talking to another someone. Lips are like slugs forming sludge-words: fat fleshy mouth chewing itself up. Beside him a face separates in a gaping yawn. Eyes dart ferociously. They are my hands connected to the railing. So many thoughts filling one place, so loud. Rifle rattle and shrill carriage walls batter in convulsions. A hurricane of whispers roars through the carriage.

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